Building simplified supply chain and achieving uniform quality for large volume facade glass requirement of property developers

One of India’s leading developer required 1,18,000 sq. metre of glass for one of its flagship projects. The scale of this requirement was huge. Just to put things in context for the readers, the field of the largest stadium in India, the Motera Stadium is 23,000 sq. metre. In other words, they needed enough glass to cover the whole of the Motera stadium field more than 5 times with glass. This was no small ask for any single vendor in India.

The conventional wisdom is to divide the order and award it to multiple vendors because real estate project timeline is closely coupled with the delivery of materials. Any delays in material delivery, leads to cost overruns in the entire project. In working with multiple glass vendors, the supply chain becomes more resilient to production disruptions and logistical delays. However, the downside of this procurement strategy is increasing complexity of vendor management and compromise in quality. Multiple vendors can not produce glass that appears the same.

The choice for the developer effectively boils down to either taking risk of project delays and cost overruns or having glasses that have different appearances spread all over their facade like a mosaic art. They approached FUSO with the same conundrum. India’s largest glass processor had a clear solution to this dilemma. It committed to offer uniform quality glass as a single vendor. The glass would be supplied from three geographically spread facilities thereby, de-risking the project from glass supply disruptions. 

First challenge that FUSO needed to overcome was to ensure that any supply disruption from one production site is augmented by supplies from another site. Fuso’s operations team mapped the layers of suppliers, manufacturing plants and other elements of logistical network. They conducted a stress test to evaluate the ability to recover from the disruption at one of its production facilities. Resultingly, FUSO placed a synchronised production and delivery plan across its facilities to have a backup in all eventualities.

Second challenge for FUSO was to have all the glasses coming out of all the 3 productions facilities, look and perform the same way. The technical advisory committee created a unique process guideline for all its production facilities to make sure every piece of glass had the same performance parameters and appearances, thereby making sure the entire facade had a very uniform appearance.

  • Fuso’s Mumbai facility worked with facade contractor Innovator Facade systems for supplying glass to their glazing facility in Mumbai.
  • Fuso’s Chennai facility worked with facade contractor Shobha’s Aluminium and Glazing Division for supplying glass to their facility in Bengaluru.
  • Fuso’s Hyderabad facility worked with facade contractor Alcob India and Almech India for supplying glass to their glazing facility in Hyderabad.

This project has set a benchmark today in the glass and glazing industry on how property developers, construction companies and consultants can build a resilient supply chain with glass.

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